Christopher Drew had every intention of getting arrested. The 59-year-old artist and executive director of the Uptown Multi-Cultural Art Center in Chicago set about his city earlier this month in a red poncho and a sign that read "Art for Sale: $1." It was a protest against Chicago’s law on unlicensed peddling, which Drew believes puts up unconstitutional barriers preventing artists from selling their work.

The artist was confronted by Chicago police and arrested on December 3. Because he recorded the entire incident, on the understandable assumption that the reasons the officers gave for arresting him may prove useful to his follow-up lawsuit, Drew was also charged with "felony eavesdropping."

http://www.c-drew.com/blog/2009/12/09/673/

Generally speaking, it's not a crime to record an on-duty police officer in a public space. In fact, with just a few exceptions (mostly limited to military installations and nuclear energy facilities), you can photograph and/or record anything and anyone in a public space. http://www.krages.com/phoright.htm

But there are still too many stories of people being arrested, intimidated, or detained for turning their lenses on cops. (See Carlos Miller's excellent blog Photography Is Not a Crime for a litany of examples.)http://carlosmiller.com/

It happened last week in West Virginia, where award-winning photojournalist Scott Rensenberger was arrested after attempting to photograph a police officer in a Charleston mall.

You can certainly understand why someone would want to get a planned interaction with Chicago police on tape. In the last few years, the department has been hit with scandals of egregious police misconduct that, had they not been captured on tape, likely would either never have been investigated, or the investigation wouldn't have been based on what actually happened.

The most famous incident was footage of an off-duty cop viciously beating a female bartender who refused to continue serving him in 2007. He wasn't even charged until three months later, after the surveillance video surfaced on the Internet, generating worldwide outrage.

There are other examples: six cops beating two men in a bar brawl; a video of a fatal police shooting in a subway station where officer accounts of the incident don't match the video footage.

The department also recently disciplined two officers after a video showed up on the Internet showing a Chicago PD unit posing for a trophy photo with a protester they had apprehended earlier this year at the G20 summit in Pittsburgh.

http://reason.com/archives/2009/12/14/chicagos-thick-blue-wall

patriot45

12-14-2009, 08:22 PM

But there are still too many stories of people being arrested, intimidated, or detained for turning their lenses on cops. (See Carlos Miller's excellent blog Photography Is Not a Crime for a litany of examples.)http://carlosmiller.com/

Isn't that the lunatic from the DUmp!?!

Bubba Dawg

12-14-2009, 09:24 PM

Why would they object to being photographed or recorded if they don't have anything to hide?